Wednesday, 19 March 2014

Grand Prix, Rogaining and StreetO - Busy Week!

It's been quite a week. Last weekend
saw the first race of the Grand Prix season here in Melbourne, and I
was able to attend one of the earlier days in the runup to the race
itself. It takes six weeks to transform leafy Albert Park in the
heart of the city into a screaming petrolhead mecca. This year, the
cars have lost their scream. It sounds more like a high-speed
lawnmower race.

However, and more importantly, we were
able to get out on Sunday and do a six-hour rogaine. This is a long
distance navigation race, named after the three originators of the
concept. The map was huge and was immediately folded into four,
reducing our area of interest to A3 size. Pat and I walked (quickly)
together and garnered 27 controls in 5+ hours. The rest of the time
was taken up with hourly drink and snackette sessions, which kept us
going. We were treated to cheese toasties and melon slices at the
end, which were very welcome. The weather was perfect for such a long
event, 20 degrees, cloudy and dry. We had some issues with the map, a
colour copy of the Melway street guide failing to indicate a high,
1.5km fence bordering the partly-constructed Regional Rail Link. It
was the same for everyone, I suppose. I left my gps watch at home,
but a piece of string on the map afterwards measured 27km. We were
delighted to discover that we had won the Extremely Old section,
which will do doubt encourage us to enter another one.

Tuesday is my favourite day at the
moment. We were treated to another of Geoff's splendid park/street
events, with colour map, electronic punching and barbie. Some
friendly controversy arose afterwards, where splits showed that some
reprobates went through the 'uncrossable' fence between 10 and 16. I
can claim to be squeaky clean in this respect. I did my usual
anticlockwise trundle, starting 19,11,17 and finishing 12,4,15. You
join the dots. I managed all controls in 48 minutes, my watch
recording 7km. Pleased with that.

All bodes well for the upcoming weekend
in Beechworth. Highly technical bush orienteering on both days at
Rowdy Flat & Kangaroo Crossing. I suspect a reality check may be
somewhat overdue. Anyway, it's good to return to 'proper'
orienteering after a long, hot summer. I may not be saying that on
Monday.